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Important Networking Follow-Ups: How to Get Those Job Leads Calling When you leave a networking event, you may be buzzing at the prospects offered by all of those new contacts you made, but soon, the cold reality sets in. How will you be able to convert those contacts you made over a glass of wine into valuable business opportunities for you? Successful networking is all in the follow-up. If you’re looking for a job, following up is all the more crucial. Without touching base after a networking event, you become just another face in the crowd of job hunting hopefuls. The first important rule for following-up with networking contacts is to lay the foundations for the follow-up during the initial meeting. At networking events, there can be a lot of empty promises thrown around. Use that first meeting to convey the message that you haven’t gotten caught up in “networking fever” but instead that you are very serious about exploring the job opportunity that you’re discussing with your new contact. Ask the contact when would be a good time to follow-up with them, and then reiterate the information back to them at the end of your conversation: “I look forward to speaking with you Friday at 2 p.m.” If they don’t give you a specific time, then suggest one to them. This rule holds true even if your contact is giving you a lead on a job not with them but with another contact of their own. Let them know you appreciate the information by saying, “Thanks. I will plan on calling Mary on Monday afternoon at 1 p.m.” Not only will this convey your seriousness about the opportunity presented to you, but it may also get you some handy inside information, as the contact may reply, “Oh, no, Mary will be out of town until Thursday – call her then.” The next important rule to networking follow-ups is to follow up with EVERY lead a contact gives you. If a contact suggests that you call someone whom you know won’t really be able to help you in your job search, call him or her anyway. Otherwise, when your contact finds out you aren’t taking their advice, they may just decide not to give you any more the future and any business person can tell you that you never know from whom the most valuable lead will come some day. Keep the lines of communication open by giving any and all suggestions a whirl. Last but not least, do the actual following-up. Follow up with your contact exactly when you said you would, and in the exact manner you said you would (phone, email, letter, etc). If for some reason you can’t make contact at the arranged time, keep trying. If you haven’t made arrangements for a follow-up with a contact, then the rule of thumb is to follow-up with them as soon as possible after meeting them. Try to at least send an email or letter the next day saying what a pleasure it was to meet and that you look forward to talking more in the future, and then say in that note when you plan to follow-up with your contact by phone. Then, of course, stick to that new follow-up obligation. Even if the promises made by a contact while networking don’t pan out for you on the job front, don’t cross them off of your contact list. Keep them in the loop about your job search and your career goals. While they may not have been able to make if happen for you this time, you never know what they might be able to do for you in the future. Your most promising business contact may be someone you already know.

Cruise for Free Stuff Anonymously with a Free Privacy Service The World Wide Web is full of freebie offers, but many of these require you to give websites personal information and data. If you don't want your personal information floating around the World Wide Web (and who does want this?), there are some precautions you can take. Do you want to cruise for free stuff without having to worry about giving up your privacy? Here are a few privacy services that can help you cruise the web for freebies without having to worry about giving up any of your personal information. Why Should You Protect Your Privacy? Why should you even bother to use privacy services to cruise the web? There are many reasons why you would want to keep your personal data from being leaked into the World Wide Web. Every time that you are asked to provide personal information, you are at risk for infecting your computer with some kind of virus or spyware. In fact, it is estimated that the majority of all computer systems are infected by spyware. There are many programs that can actually track your keystrokes. This allows hackers and other cyber criminals to gain access to your passwords, bank account numbers and other private information. This puts you at high risk of computer identity theft. You can avoid having to enter personal information by using privacy programs to surf the web. Surf Easy with Anonymizer.com This is a program that allows you to surf the web anonymously. What does this program do? This program protects you by keeping your IP address secure. This means that online tracking software will be unable to track the sites you visit and keep a profile on your online activities. This program allows your connection to be redirected through their own secure servers, thus keeping your online identity hidden and protected. This program uses 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer technology. The program also provides protections against pharming, phishing and spyware websites that seek to invade your computer. Keep Your Privacy with Enonymous What is Enonymous.com, and what can it do to protect your privacy? Enonymous.com offers web surfers the ability to cruise confidently with its own host of free privacy software. This privacy software was created as a way to protect web surfers and consumers right to privacy. The program offers users with privacy policy statements and ratings. The software also helps users choose what kind of personal information they want to divulge before making web purchases. If you are concerned about giving away your name, phone number, email and other personal data, not to mention credit card and bank account numbers, then you will appreciate this software program. For Fast, Free and Totally Private Email, Turn to Hushmail Are you looking for fast, free and private email? If so, Hushmail.com is what you are looking for. This email uses industry standard algorithms that are optimized for the highest level of privacy, authenticity and security. This is one of the best of the free email services if you are concerned about protecting your privacy. All you need to do is to create your own passphrase. The program creates a transparent decryption and encryption system. It is also very user-friendly that allows for easy encryption and decryption of data, and for fast retrieval of a public/private key. ZoneAlarm for the Best in Firewall Protection If you are looking for the best in firewall protection, consider using ZoneAlarm for protecting your PC from invading viruses and spyware. This award-winning program helps shield your computer from incoming attackers, and helps banish already-present invaders. Surf the World Wide Web with confidence with the help of ZoneAlarm.

How to Avoid Spam and Junk Email and Still Enjoy Freebies Free stuff is great, but when you are facing an inbox that is literally choking on spam, than you may find yourself wondering just how free your freebies really are. Spam and junk email are the unwanted consequences of cashing in on great free deals online, and it is enough to keep some people away from freebie offers entirely. Here’s the good news, however – you might not able to stop the spammers in their tracks completely, but there are a lot of things you can do to keep the annoyance caused by junk email to a minimum. Get on the defensive and reclaim the control you have over your inbox. Rule number one for cashing in on freebies is to set up a separate email account that you use only for your free stuff hunting. There are tons of web based email programs that you can join for free, and you can use these new email accounts as your point of contact for the companies from who you get freebie offers. After all, giving your email address to a company is simply part of getting freebies – that is why the company is giving away freebies in the first place. They want to collect your email address so they can email you about their products and hopefully convince you to shell out some cash for them in the future. By protecting your main email address, you can easily control the amount of spam you have to wade through when you just want to read your personal or business emails. You know that a company wants your email address in a exchange for a freebie, and you know why they want it, but what you might not know is that not all companies are created equal when it comes to it how the treat your email address. To know this, you have to check out a company’s privacy policy. Some companies will allow you to opt out of all future emails, including the ones from them, meaning in theory that your email address should never end up on any junk email solicitation list after your get your freebie. Other companies don’t let you opt out of their emails, but they let you choose whether or not they can give your address to partner companies who have products to offer that you “might be interested in.” With these companies, at least you can keep the amount of solicitations to a minimum. Still other companies follow a “no holds barred” kind of plan, in which they are allowed to share your email address with anyone they choose. These last kinds of companies are the kinds that end up loading you up with the spam, because they often sell the lists of email addresses they collect to companies that send out spam messages. Proceed with caution when a company has a policy like this one. If you can’t find a privacy policy at all on the website from which you are getting your freebie, then it might be best to move on to a different free offer. Another spam reducing trick that a lot of people miss out on is ignoring spam completely. Don’t open your spam messages, and whatever you do, don’t ask to be removed from a mailing list. That might seem like the logical way to stop the spam, but all you do when you do that is confirm to the spammers that their email is going to a real, live person. Last but not least, if even your dedicated freebie email address is gasping under the pressure of the spam, abandon it and start a new one. If you collect freebies on a regular basis, the word will eventually get out and the junk emailers will find you. Start a new address and get a clean slate.